A tale of two teeth

As you may recall, high on the list of things to accomplish at the age of five was losing a tooth. After riding a bike with no training wheels and crossing the monkey bars were crossed off the list, losing a tooth remained there. Lonely. In top spot. Age six came, and still nothing more than a couple of wiggly teeth. You can imagine the level of excitement in the house yesterday when all of a sudden one of those wiggly bottom teeth became exceedingly more wiggly and I proclaimed:
"You'll lose that tooth this week."

The word of mom is the word of mom, after all.

Meredith wiggled it through bedtime stories, waggled it through bedtime cuddles, and had to be told more than once to settle down and go to sleep.

This morning the tooth popped out in a bite of toast.

She was more than a bit excited. You'd think she'd won the lottery. It was contagious actually, I got to feeling all giddy as she dashed around the house before daycare making sure all the preparations were in order.

The precious first tooth would be stored in her glow-in-the-dark tooth holder necklace for the day, then hop into the pocket on Toothy's back as she was hung on the door of Meredith's room to signal the Tooth Fairy her time was nigh.

She wanted to wear the tooth necklace to daycare and could NOT be persuaded otherwise, despite descriptions of massive calamities involving losing the tooth in the playground.

After daycare she looked a little different.

There was a bigger window in her bottom jaw.

And a different little pearly white in her hand.

I was amazed! Two teeth in one day! Had the other one been so loose that losing its next-door-neighbour-crutch was all it took for it to pop out too?

Why didn't she seem more excited?

As the story unfolded, apparently she was sitting in a big armchair with her friend and just happened to open up the tooth necklace because her friend just had to see the tooth, and it just happened to fall down the edge of the chair. An upholstered armchair with a non-removable cushion and no access from underneath.

Apparently more than one of her friends stuck their little hands down the side of the chair to see if they could find it. The proverbial needle in the haystack. As I gamely jammed my hand down the side of the chair too at pick-up time, Meredith casually mentioned that they'd found some pretty gross stuff down there.

But no tooth.

So in an effort to make sure the Tooth Fairy's visit was not for naught (and more than likely in her mind, to avoid a we-told-you-so discussion at home), she pulled out the next tooth.

It was loose, but nowhere near as loose as the one that fell out this morning. I must have asked her five times (with a grimace on my face) "Didn't that hurt?????"

On the drive home we had a talk about how likely the Tooth Fairy is well accustomed to missing teeth, the rate of children swallowing their teeth or losing them on roller coasters and all, and that perhaps should this scenario EVER present itself again we could content ourselves with WRITING A NOTE instead of PULLING OUT A SECOND TOOTH.

She dictated a note after we got home, just to advise the Tooth Fairy of the day's events.

"Dear Tooth Fairy,

I'm sorry I couldn't give you my tooth. I was at daycare with my tooth and I opened the container and the tooth came out. I lost it. I'm sorry, but another one fell out and is in my tooth holder.

From: Meredith"

Stubborn much??